BioSIRT Log January 2010

Collaboration

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) Implementation Working Group met on December 3. Marg and Debra from the BioSIRT team chaired the meeting.

The Working Group was formed in February 2008 to oversee the scope and direction of the integration of BioSIRT within the Department. The original terms of reference for the group were reviewed at this December meeting. The group has met their objectives and so it was decided that the original working
group be disbanded. A technical working group will be established in 2010 to followup
with technical issues.

Debra Riddell attended a CRC for National Plant Biosecurity workshop in December. The workshop was arranged by the Enhanced Risk Assessment Tools (ERAT) project.

The National Coordination Team (NCT) made a visit to Young, NSW in mid-December. One of their own, Dr. Peter Frecklington, is a local of the busy Country town. The Livestock Health and Pest Authority (LHPA) Boardroom was the venue for the BioSIRT Planning Workshop. The workshop had a theme of the '6 Thinking Hats' by Edward De Bono. The Team put on their 'thinking hats' and set their objectives and priorities for the upcoming period.

Consistency

The National BioSIRT template for Fruit Fly Surveillance (FFS) is soon to be rolled out. For more information on the rollout, see the special feature below.

Major species of fruit fly in Australia that are of economic importance include the Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) (pictured left) and the Queensland fruit fly (Bactrocera tryoni) (or QFF) (pictured below right ).

Fruit flies can lay their eggs in small groups just beneath the skin of maturing or ripe fruit. The tiny creamy white maggots hatch from the eggs and burrow through the fruit as they feed.

Infested fruit can look fine on the outside. When the maggots are fully grown they leave the fruit and burrow into the soil, where they pupate. Adult flies become most active when the weather warms up, with a population peak in late summer.

Adult fruit fly activity can be monitored by using traps containing synthetic attractants. These traps are checked regularly through the year. If fruit fly is detected a code of practice applies.

Control measures include preventing the movement of fruit from the area, removal of fruit from plants and destruction of wild or neglected fruit trees.

Eradication measures include treatments using cover sprays and/or bait sprays. In some situations, an integrated bait and sterile insect technique (SIT) program can be used as an alternative to baiting only.

Fruit fly has the potential to destroy a multi-million dollar fruit export industry. Quarantine measures such as inspection and treatment of fruit and vegetables assist in preventing the entry or further spread of fruit flies. Australian residents can help to control fruit fly by correctly managing fruit fly host plants and fruit on their properties.

Fruit Fly Template Update

The National Fruit Fly (FF) template has now been finalised for routine fruit fly surveillance and is scheduled to be released to all jurisdictions from early February onwards.

The National Fruit Fly Rollout has been partially funded under the National Fruit Fly Strategy and is fully endorsed by the Plant Health Committee. As well as implementing the FF template in all jurisdictions, it will be aggregating the information collected into a National BioSIRT installation at DAFF. This will be the first time this type of data will be seen in one place.

The BioSIRT team will be visiting all jurisdictions over the next five months to assist with the implementation and training and also hope to concurrently deploy a variation of the template adapted for the Asian Gypsy Moth (AGM) trapping program.

The Application

BioSIRT passed a major milestone last month with the release of Version 2.0 (v2.0). A feature on v2.0 appears below.

The face to face (f2f) NBDC was held in Canberra on 10 December 2009. It was a pleasure to have all NBDC members in attendance. The Northern Territory have offered to host the next f2f NBDC in June 2010.

A Resource Management Package (RMP) workshop was held in Canberra 8 December 2009. Members of the NBDC met to consider options available and to formulate a recommendation for the BioSIRT Governance Group (BGG).

Training

Members of the NCT travelled to Sydney¡¯s Taronga Zoo to deliver User and Administrator training sessions from 1–3 December 2009. The NCT would like to thank the Australian Wildlife Health Network (AWHN) for hosting and welcome 10 new Level 1 BioSIRT Administrators.

BioSIRT have recruited a Training and Communications Officer. Kymme Hoadley is excited to be returning to her former role in the NCT in February 2010.

The NCT hosted a Reports workshop in Canberra on 9 December 2009. The NCT has designed a set of 'Standard reports' that were previewed at the workshop to show how reports fit into BioSIRT. This workshop will become part of BioSIRT's training course suite in 2010.

New Faces

Rochelle Boyce-Bacon

I joined DAFF and the BioSIRT team in early December after working in other government departments and private enterprise in Canberra. I recently moved from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government here my role was predominately in change management and communications.

My role with BioSIRT is to provide assistance and training to each jurisdiction for the implementation of the National BioSIRT Fruit fly template. It's an exciting time to have joined the team and be part of the first National template rollout.

I moved to Canberra from New Zealand ten years ago and have never quite found my way back! I really appreciate the lifestyle Canberra has to offer families and with two teenagers and various animals, it looks likely we are here to stay. I'm looking forward to meeting and working with you all in the coming months.

Version 2.0

Report creation is a major enhancement in v2.0. Before v2.0, you would have needed a thorough knowledge of the 'data model' of BioSIRT to design a new report, because you would need draw data from several places. Now, a set of data 'reporting views' brings together data items into grouped lists so you can design most new reports based on data from only a few reporting views.

In addition, a set of 'dynamic' reporting views extracts data from group and individual observations, the 'footer' and 'sub footer' lists that can have templatespecific types of animal or plant observations. These dynamic views are set to generate each night based on the data contained in a particular instance of BioSIRT.

A set of standard reports has been designed that you can customise with Crystal Reports Designer. A Reports workshop will become part of BioSIRT's training course suite in 2010.

The upgrade of BioSIRT to v2.0 includes the following features.

1. Improvements were made to BioSIRT application to allow the reimport of templates. This follows on from the development of generic templates for diseases, health pests and pest species. Once a generic template is imported and used for one disease or pest, there may be a need to import the generic template a second time, to modify it, for a second response.
   
   
2. The BioSIRT User experience had been improved by a significant reduction in login time. The review of existing events has
   improved with the addition of new fields available for display on the Summary Views. This particularly improves the review of laboratory submission entries to provide updates for results.
   
   
3. BioSIRT is now able to deal with the transfer of properties to a different Control Centre should their allocation be changed
   during a response. As well, events created within BioSIRT are now serialised to allow the connection between events to be more easily aligned, streamlining management of responses.
   
   
4. All identified 'bugs' were fixed for v2.0 release.

Full install of v2.0 were distributed at the NBDC f2f held in Canberra on 10 December 2009.